Walking Dead Fanfic: (This Is Not A) Ghost Story
Title: (This Is Not A) Ghost Story
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Daryl/Carol
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 5430
Summary: Whatever is in that cell is not human.
Notes: Written for spook_me, for the prompt "ghost". Post Season Two. (This story was written prior to the start of Season Three.)
(This Is Not A) Ghost Story
by Severina
There were times in his life that Daryl thought that he was bound to end up in prison. Mostly as collateral damage, getting caught up in some scam that Merle was running, some deal that went sour. He’d come home from a late shift, engine grease still under his fingernails and his head ringing with all the bullshit little complaints he heard all goddamn day, only to find Merle and his asshole buddies spread out over the living room, the music blaring and the coffee table littered with their shit. More than once it was him that flushed the blow down the toilet moments before the cops showed up, him dragging on Merle’s arm to get him to back the fuck down. Sometimes it worked, and Merle would mutter and curse and let him deal with the cops and then cuff him in the head the minute they were gone, incoherent, raging. And sometimes it didn’t work, and Merle’d take a swing and get hauled off to county. And those times when Merle did go inside? They were the only times he could breathe.
Daryl kept his own nose clean. Occasionally a little weed if he needed to pass out, some ‘shrooms when the mood took him. He wasn’t a regular user and he sure as fuck didn’t sell. No little old ladies wrote him cheques for asphalt repairs he’d never show up for; he never had to escape out the bathroom window from the dude that wanted to break his legs.
But he ended up in a prison regardless.
Weird how shit happens.
Daryl takes the steps to Block C two at a time, crossbow thumping against his back until he emerges into the shadowy corridor. He hesitates at the bottom of the stairs to let his eyes adjust. Faintly, he can still hear the noise from the inhabited cells on Block B, a muted murmur of voices. Before he left, he’d seen Lori and Carl with their heads bent together over a book; T-Dog was still laboring over that old engine he’d dragged out of one of the prison vans; Rick had been teaching Carol how to clean and reassemble Dale’s old hunting rifle. He wouldn’t say everyone was relaxed - they’d learned, now, never to fully put their guard down - but they were more at peace than they’d been in a long time.
When Carol had raised her head to watch him across the expanse of the block, he’d quickly ducked his own head and walked away.
Daryl shakes his head now, brings himself back to the present. He only has to take a few steps into the hallway for the noise from above to fade out entirely. Here, there is only the faint drip from a busted main they’ve never been able to trace back to the source and the sound of the wind howling through the cracks in the windows penetrating from the outside world. At first, as usual, the silence is unnerving. In their little enclave on B, it’s never completely quiet. Seems like someone is always nattering on about something, and the damn Korean snores like a motherfucker. Silence takes some getting used to.
When his eyes adjust to the lack of light, he begins a slow circuit of the cell block.
He knows some of them think these patrols are pointless. Glenn’s been the most vocal, reminding them that they locked down every possible access point, that the doors are bolted, that there is no way in hell anything can get past them, living or undead. He’s probably right, but Daryl’s always been of the opinion that nothing is failsafe. The farm proved that. The golf course proved that. Any of a dozen bolt-holes since then proved that, and he’d have patrolled twice a day himself if Rick hadn’t backed his play and set up a regular schedule for all of them.
He’s got people to protect. People he cares about.
He shines a flashlight methodically into every cell, checks the deadbolts. Nothing changed since the day before or the day before that.
He’s halfway back to the stairwell when he hears the noise.
Flicking his finger over to the trigger is instinctual; other than that, he doesn’t move. Barely breathes. It’s several long moments before the noise repeats itself and he can identify the rasping shuffle of footsteps coming from a cell a few feet ahead and to his left. A cell that he already checked on his way through the block.
Part of him wants to call out, tell Glenn or whatever asshole has wandered down into C block to stop fucking with him. But the hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end, and despite the chill in the block he can feel a thin line of sweat crawling down his spine.
Whatever is in that cell is not human.
He takes a few shuffling steps of his own, stepping carefully on the worn and filthy concrete, using every trick he knows to mask his approach. It’s only when he’s almost parallel to the half-open door that he swings quickly around, brings his crossbow up and braces it on his arm to fire.
The walker is huddled in the furthest corner of the cell, pressed into the space between the bunk with its flea-infested blanket and the wall. Its shoulders are hunched, face averted from the thin shaft of light drifting through the grimy windowpane.
“Come on,” Daryl whispers.
The walker’s head twitches, and when it lifts its chin tangled blonde hair catches in the light. It snarls, jaw snapping at the air, and takes a single shuddering step forward.
Daryl dances back, blinking rapidly. He can hear the rapid pounding of his heart over the steady drip of the broken water main, over the thin whistle of the wind, over the walker’s primal growls. He can’t hear his own voice, but he knows he says the name.
Sophia.
* * *
“A ghost,” Rick repeats.
“I know how it sounds,” Daryl says. He pushes off from the wall, pacing the length of the small office. Tattered invoices and triplicate forms have been replaced by posted watch schedules and shift assignments that flutter in his wake. Not so different from the past, after all.
It took him what felt like forever to come to the decision to go to Rick. Not that he figured the man would laugh at him or mock him - Rick ain’t Merle. But he’s got plenty of experience in people not believing what he tells them, and for a man that does his best not to lie that’s a hard pill to swallow. Easier to just pretend he didn’t see Sophia at all, go about his business like normal. But in the end, that just wasn’t in him. Better to be misbelieved and have the truth out there than keep it hidden and maybe somebody gets hurt down the line.
“I’m not doubting you saw something,” Rick says.
Daryl stops his pacing, looks up to meet Rick’s eyes and can’t mask the surprise in his own.
Rick shrugs, leans his hip on the battered desk. “If the dead can walk, who else knows what else is out there in the world? Maybe what you saw was Sophia’s ghost. Maybe it was some… manifestation of your fears-“
“Oh Lord, don’t go spoutin’ no psychological mumbo-jumbo at me,” Daryl interrupts. “I know what I saw.”
“Fine,” Rick says. The hand he holds up is calloused, dirty from his afternoon shift shoring up the south wall. “Let’s say you did see Sophia. How do you want to deal with this?”
Daryl chews his lip, a bad habit left over from childhood that he’s never been able to break. “We have to keep Carol away from there.”
Rick nods. “That’s easy enough. I’ll tell her that I need her to take extra shifts in the garden. Best to utilize our people where they’re most suited, anyhow. But I think it’s best we keep this to ourselves.”
“Not tell Carol, you mean.”
“Not tell anyone,” Rick clarifies. “You and I will take the patrol shifts on Block B from now on. We’ll tell the others… hell, we’ll tell ‘em we didn’t think it was fair to pull them off more pressing matters. Nobody will argue. And we’ll watch.”
* * *
He’s sitting in the watch tower taking his early evening shift when Carol finds him.
“Brought you some supper,” she says by way of greeting. The food on the plate she hands him is still hot, thin tendrils of steam twisting in the breeze. “Glenn broiled up a couple of those rabbits you caught the other day. Added some of the spices Hershel found on the last run. It’s pretty tasty, actually.”
Daryl glances at the plate before setting it aside. The meat looks fine; smells fine even, enough to start his stomach to growling. But the thought of eating makes his stomach turn in a way that reminds him of those days on the farm, tucked away next to the crumbling chimney on the edge of the property, nursing his hurts inside and out. Makes him feel weak, and he doesn’t have time for weakness, can’t afford it. Especially now.
Carol frowns at the discarded plate. They’re the same frown lines that creased her brow when she was bent over the disassembled rifle that afternoon. He hates seeing them there, hates it even more when she turns the frown on him.
“Is everything okay?” she asks. Her hand comes up to rest on his forearm, grips lightly. “You look pale. Are you feeling all right?”
Daryl wrenches his arm away. “’m fine, quit clawin’ at me. I’m just tired.”
She doesn’t look like she believes him, but she releases her grip, props her arms against the concrete wall and stares out across the yard. From here, Daryl can see the first sprouts coming up in the vegetable garden they fashioned from the former exercise yard. They all did their part, clearing the land of rocks and pebbles, tilling the soil, planting the seeds. Rationing their own water in the beginning, sacrificing it to the land so the seeds could take root and flourish. But the garden is Carol’s more than anyone’s, her pride and joy.
She shouldn’t be frowning when she looks at it.
Daryl brushes a shoulder against hers. “Sorry,” he says.
She shrugs, doesn’t look his way. “You know your body better than me. I shouldn’t bother you.”
“It’s not a bother,” he says, and when she turns to face him with a tentative smile, he fumbles for the plate on the concrete ledge, picks at the cooling hare to have something to do with his hands. It’s only when she’s patted him once on the arm and he can hear her footsteps echoing from the stairwell as she descends back to the ground that he sets the plate aside, scrubs a hand across his face.
“You’re not a bother,” he says to the cool evening air.
II
Daryl sees Sophia again three days later.
He can’t lie and tell himself that he imagined it the first time, because he knows he didn’t. But every day when he descends the stairwell into Block C, shoulders stiff and back ramrod straight, nerves thrumming, he does tell himself that it doesn’t have to happen again. Sophia is at rest, her fragile body buried on the old farm. He carved the place-marker himself, just a simple cross with her name engraved on it but pretty enough all the same. He even made sure her little doll went into the ground with her. Her soul should be at peace.
He tells himself this every single day, reminds himself that her shade cannot hurt him.
That doesn’t stop him from flinging up his bow when he hears her shuffling footsteps in the abandoned cell. Doesn’t stop his mouth from going dry when she sees him and cocks her head, her tiny hands flailing and grasping at the air. When her teeth snap together with an audible crunch he flinches, sidles back until his ass hits the bars of the cell behind him. And though he’s sure he never looks away, he doesn’t see her disappear.
It’s only later, lying sleepless in his lumpy bunk and listening to Glenn’s snores rattle the bars in the next cell, that he realizes that Sophia’s eyes had lost the glossy white film common to the walkers. Thinking on it, he’d almost swear that she knew him. Recognized him.
The air in the cellblock is thick and close, holding all the heat of the day. But he still pulls the flimsy blanket up to his shoulders, and shivers.
* * *
The herd arrives the next day.
It’s small as they go these days, around 70 head, but more aggressive than they’ve seen in a long while. The frost wire fences heave when the undead fling their decaying bodies against it, and getting close to it to take them out with their standard tools of fireplace pokers and lead pipes means risking getting grabbed and drawn in to those gaping mouths, or scratched by jagged nails. Daryl goes through all his arrows and the rest are forced to use the guns, using up ammunition that they can’t afford to spare. The point blank range means they rarely miss, but Daryl sees Rick cringe when he’s tallying up the damage to their reserves.
Maggie and Lori have already taken up lookout on the towers and T-Dog’s rolling open the gate when Carol finds him, pulling on work gloves to begin the clean-up. She’s flushed, exhilarated with success, and she reminds him suddenly of himself when he was a kid, when scoring the kill was the most important part of the hunt, before the pride in tracking for the sake of the skill it took went to the forefront.
“You did good today,” he tells her. Keeping half an eye on her is as natural as breathing, as common an occurrence as the rats that scurry through the empty prison cells. He doesn’t think about it, he realizes now. He just does it, making sure he knows where she’s at and how well she’s holding up, and today she didn’t flinch, didn’t miss a shot as far as he could tell. She should be proud.
“Far cry from where I came from,” she says.
Sometimes it’s hard for him to remember that Carol, the one that came to him after weeks on the run, miserable and tired, feeling sorry for herself, still believing all the bullshit that her fuckass husband had drilled into her head. She’d come to him, crying that she couldn’t do it, that she was useless, that she was going to get someone killed, get herself killed.
But that conversation, the one that turned everything around for her? He remembers that like it was yesterday. He hadn’t pulled any punches.
“You don’t want to drag people down? Be a burden?” he’d said. “Then don’t be. Only person who can fix you is you.”
And he’d watched her face crumple and her lips quiver and mentally kicked himself, told himself that he should have phrased it differently, taken it easier on her. But then her shoulders had straightened and she’d swiped a hand across her eyes. Nodded at him.
“You’re right, Daryl,” she’d said. “Will you teach me how to shoot?”
“Nope,” he had answered immediately. When her face fell, he just shook his head. “I ain’t a good teacher. Don’t got the patience.” They’d been staying at the old soccer stadium then, and he’d scanned the grounds, jutted his chin. “Lori. She’s a good shot. Good teacher, too. Ain’t gonna bite your head off if you make a mistake and get a black eye from the recoil.”
“You wouldn’t bite my head off.”
Daryl remembers that he had squinted into the sunlight, had told himself that he was just checking the horizon and not avoiding meeting her eyes. Despite the months that had passed, on the farm and off it, he still wasn’t used to people having that kind of blind faith in him.
Still wasn’t completely comfortable with it, truth be told. It’s unnerving, kind of irritating, makes his skin itch in a way that’s impossible to scratch. Especially when it’s her.
He blinks, brings himself back to the present. To Carol, smiling at him. He feels his lips twitch in response and then she’s patting his arm and moving away, running to catch up with Hershel, saying something about boiling clean water for the work crew.
Daryl spends the afternoon heaving several dozen reeking, rotting bodies onto the burn pile and doesn’t see a single one. All he sees is that smile.
III
She’s sitting when he sees her the next time, two weeks later, thin arms wrapped around bony knees. But Sophia struggles to her feet when she sees him. Her upper lip curls when she snaps at him, and he keeps a wary distance, but even in the deep gloom of the cell he can see that the discoloration in her mouth has faded along with the misty cast to her eyes. Her hair looks different too, though he can’t place how. She still snarls at him, still stumble-walks when she takes a few steps closer to the bars. He still believes - knows - that she could hurt him if she wanted, shade or not. Infect him. Kill him.
But he’s not afraid.
* * *
Once a month, they treat themselves. The generator comes out. Lights at half power - as Rick is quick to point out, they don’t want to advertise their presence - and a battered old boom box hooked up and playing softly in the corner, mostly CDs that Beth and Carl manage to salvage on their supply missions, music sung by boys that sound like girls to Daryl’s ears. If they’ve managed to scrounge up any booze on the runs that comes out too, though nobody drinks much these days. Getting caught off guard and full of hooch isn’t a thought that anyone savours.
Daryl usually volunteers for watch in the guard tower on those nights. They remind him too much of his past, of school dances-club nights-grimy bars, of sitting in the corner nursing a soda or a beer or a shot, of being ignored at best and ridiculed at worst. Too many of those nights ended with skirmishes in parking lots, black eyes and bruised knuckles, rushed groping with strangers in back alleys, falling into bed with burning eyes and stomach twisted in knots. With the thin walls failing to block the sound of Merle in the next room, fucking some blonde with dead eyes and track marks on her arms. With punching his pillow and wishing for something different, better, more, and not having a clue how to get it.
Tonight, though, T-Dog had insisted on taking his watch. Clapped him on the shoulder, said, “You been doin’ all those extra patrols on C, as well as still taking on the supply runs and the hunts. You deserve a break, man.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
There’s no corner to hide in, but Daryl sits as far from the laughter and camaraderie as he can, as far from Maggie and Glenn swaying in time to the music as he can get without seeming completely antisocial. He’s busy staring into the dregs of the single bottle of warm beer that he’s allowed himself and wondering how long he should wait before escaping out into the cool evening air when the table shifts. He raises his eyes to Carol sliding into the chair next to him.
“Having fun?” she asks.
“Oh yeah,” he answers dryly. “Barrel of laughs.”
She ignores the sarcasm, turns her eyes to the rest of the group. “I love these nights. Ed… Ed never let me listen to music.”
“Ed was a fuckwad,” Daryl grunts out.
“He really was,” Carol laughs. She turns to face him fully, dropping her eyes to something in her lap. She holds the item out tentatively, and even in the dim lighting he can see that a flush has come into her cheeks. “I made you something,” he says.
Daryl’s fingers fumble as he takes it, the wool catching on the callouses on the pads of his fingers. The yarn is in a myriad of colours, bright purple and orange and pastel green and a sickly shade of yellow that reminds him uncomfortably of bile. He squints, looks up to meet Carol’s eyes. “It’s-“
“Hideous, I know,” Carol says with a grin. “There were only scraps on the ends of all the skeins we found, so I had to make do. But it’s a close knit, and it’ll be warm. The nights are getting a lot colder out there.”
He shakes out the scarf, trails his fingers along the fringe. Tries to remember the last time anyone gave him something. A gift. Might’ve been one Christmas. Was one of the rare occasions when times were flush at the Dixon house. He was too young to know why. He only knew that the train set was bright and big and new, and he remembers his ma’s eyes shining with tears when she gave it to him, her looking happy despite the purpling bruise discolouring her cheekbone. He remembers playing with that damn train night and day, ‘til Merle came home New Year’s Eve, stumble-drunk and hooting, tripped over it on the bedroom floor and then kicked it into the wall.
Daryl doesn’t remember any presents after that.
He’s embarrassed to discover his throat is dry, his hand shaking. He quickly makes a fist, shoves the scarf toward her. “It’s great,” he says, “but I can’t take this. You’ve got night shifts, too. You’ll need it.”
“It’s yours,” she says, shaking her head and getting up. Her thin shoulders lift in a shrug. “You can lend it to me.”
She’s halfway across the room before he realizes that he didn’t thank her.
And he knows it’s ridiculous, he knows, but he still sleeps that night with one hand wrapped around the damn scarf.
IV
The next time he sees Sophia, a week later, he understands.
* * *
Daryl stands at the edge of the vegetable garden, watching Carol work.
It took a lot of man-hours, a lot of sweat and hard work to clear the land. But soon they’ll have fresh turnips and squash, real potatoes that don’t come out of a dented can. There are tentative plans to fuel up a backhoe, head out to one of the nearby farms and attempt to dig up and transport a few apple and peach trees so they don’t have to risk leaving the safety of the yard for the harvest.
Here, with the brick wall at his back and the garden stretching out before him, it’s hard to remember that walkers exist at all.
Daryl walks carefully between the rows, drops down beside her. The ground is hard beneath his knees, but pliant. Good soil.
Carol glances up at him with a smile but continues working, long elegant fingers patiently digging out the weeds. Funny how he never noticed just how graceful her fingers were before, how deft. The silence that stretches out between them is comfortable, soothing, and Daryl’s sorely tempted to just leave it at that. But he knows that if he doesn’t speak now he’ll never get any peace, and in this world peace is hard to come by. When a man gets a chance to find it, he’s gotta take it.
“Got somethin’ to say,” he manages to get out.
Carol pauses in working out a tenacious weed, looks over at him and shades her eyes with her hand. The dirt is grimed into every line on her palm, mired beneath her nails, and he wonders if - before all this, before the end of the world - she was the type to garden wearing a big floppy hat, flowered gloves. He thinks probably she just dug right in, the same as she does now. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.
“Okay,” she says.
Daryl brushes his fingers across the green tops of the carrots. Ready to pick soon, if the memories of his ma’s scrubby little back garden are anything to go by. The sun beats down on his bent neck, and he’s aware of Carol pressing her lips together and turning back to her weeding, of a beetle trundling across the dirt, of the tracks of the trowel left behind from digging into the soft earth. Everything seems to stand out in sharp relief, and all of it is nothing to the sweat trickling down his back and beading his face, making his ragged too-long hair stick to his cheeks and his neck. Sweat that has nothing to do with the sun.
“Thing is,” he says finally, “I ain’t good with words.”
Carol doesn’t look up from her work when she replies. “You’re a man of action. Nothing wrong with that.”
A man of action. Daryl suppresses a snort, runs his fingers through the topsoil. Seems to him that a man of action would know what to do and how to do it, wouldn’t stutter and stammer like a goddamn schoolboy. A man of action would sweep his woman into his arms, whisper in her ear how much he cares for her, tell her that loving her makes him stronger, not weaker. He watches as Carol gently pushes the dislodged soil back into place and wants to tell her how much he wants those hands on him, how he can’t sleep for wanting that, for wanting her, every bit of her.
He thinks it all, and the sun beats down, unrelenting in its observation of his failure.
“Fuck it. I can’t do this,” he says finally. He stars to push up from the ground but then her hand is on his arm, cool and dirty from working in the loose soil, and he freezes. Everything in him is telling him to run away, to not let this happen. He stares away, away, beyond the cleared field, beyond the barb-wired topped fence, stares at the treetops, at the birds swirling in the clear blue summer sky.
But when her hand moves up to frame his face, he lets her do it. When she smoothes a palm down his cheek and urges him silently to face her, he forces himself to meet her eyes.
And when she kisses him, lips dry and chapped yet incredibly, deliciously soft, he realizes that he has never been this happy. Never in his whole miserable life.
“I think,” she says when they part, “that you’re doing just fine.”
* * *
The next day, Rick agrees to give up his first patrol shift of Block C. He looks curious but doesn’t ask why, and Daryl is grateful.
Daryl heads straight to the cell that he’s come to think of as Sophia’s. He’s not surprised to find her waiting for him.
But this time when she steps from the shadows, her back is straight, her eyes clear. Her hair is clean and brushed to a shine, held back from her face by a thick black ribbon. This is a little girl who never watched her mama get beat down, never had to hide herself from a drunken daddy. This is Sophia bright and shiny and whole.
He watches her until she fades away.
V
“You’re sure you’ve got everything?” Glenn asks for the third time. “The knife?”
“I’ve got the knife,” Maggie snaps. “I’ve got the gun, the ammunition, the backpack. Do you want to check my bag to make sure I packed clean underwear, too?”
“Jeez, excuse me for being concerned,” Glenn says before he frowns. “Wait. You didn’t pack clean underwear, did you? You’re not supposed to be gone that long. I should be going with you-“
“We’ve been through this,” Rick interrupts. “Maggie and Daryl and T can check a few snares and go on a supply run without you, Glenn. Shocking, I know.”
Daryl turns away from the gathered group, eyes Carol warily. “You ain’t gonna ask if I brought clean underwear, are ya?”
She leans her hands on his chest, grins cheekily up at him. “Last I checked, you weren’t wearing any.”
Daryl feels the heat rush to his cheeks, hopes that it can be chalked up to the sun beating down half a billion degrees, already causing sweat to bead on his skin, the hair at the nape of his neck to dampen and curl. He looks around to make sure no one is watching before he pecks her awkwardly on the forehead.
This - all of it, this closeness - still makes him dizzy, makes him feel clumsy and off-kilter. He knows he’s lucky that she’s a good woman, willing to be patient. Willing to just lie with him on the two cots they’ve pushed together in their shared cell at the end of the tier, willing to just touch him in the dark, let him touch her. There’s no privacy for anything more, and frankly he’s not ready for anything more, still getting used to the sure solid weight of her as a presence in his life.
He squints back at the group, Maggie murmuring something in Glenn’s ear now before leaning in to kiss him good-bye, smooth and easy. Daryl wishes he could feel that comfortable, wishes he had the words to tell Carol that he was going to miss her, that his bedroll will feel empty and cold without her curling around his side, that he’ll worry about her safety and be proud of her for her strength. He opens his mouth, closes it again without saying a word.
But when Carol just smoothes her palms down his chest and smiles brightly at him as she steps back, he stops wishing for the things he can’t be, the things he can’t say. She knows. Somehow, she knows.
* * *
Two days later, she’s waiting for him at the gate. He’s so grateful to see her that he kisses her without thinking twice about it.
It isn’t awkward at all.
* * *
Daryl waits until Carol is snoring softly beside him before he crawls carefully from the cot. He slides into his pants and boots, but doesn’t bother with a shirt. He bends to snag his backpack from the floor, then pauses at the cell door to watch the rise and fall of Carol’s chest, to study the profile of her face against the pillow, the exact position of her fingers curled on the blanket. He has a portfolio of these images now, tucked away safe. He lets himself flip through them when he’s alone on the watchtower, or when he’s out on a hunt. Anytime he’s alone and the long hours are pressing down on him. Nobody can ever take them away.
Hershel glances curiously his way when he passes through the common area of B block, but the old man doesn’t ask any questions. Every one of them’s had bouts of insomnia since they went on the run, and strangely the issues only got worse once they had four solid walls ringed with barb-wire around them and a roof over their heads. The brain is a fucking weird thing, and sometimes it just doesn’t want to believe that safety is actually at hand.
He makes his way carefully down the stairs to Block C. The only illumination comes from the moonlight shining through the barred windows, striping the floor in alternating bands of black and gold. But he knows the way unerringly.
He stops at the door of Sophia’s cell, unties the straps on his pack and reaches inside.
The hunt was successful. He and Maggie and T-Dog returned with enough canned goods to get them through until their own vegetables flourish, as well as a brace of rabbits, a dozen squirrels and a pheasant. But Daryl had a secondary target on the hunt as well, one that was more important to him than creamed corn and wild game.
The flower is a little crushed, but he carefully smoothes out the petals before he places it on the bunk nearest the corner where Sophia used to stand. The moonbeams almost seem to shift to bathe the Cherokee rose in their light.
“This one,” Daryl says into the silence of the cell, “bloomed for you.”
.
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Daryl/Carol
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 5430
Summary: Whatever is in that cell is not human.
Notes: Written for spook_me, for the prompt "ghost". Post Season Two. (This story was written prior to the start of Season Three.)
(This Is Not A) Ghost Story
by Severina
There were times in his life that Daryl thought that he was bound to end up in prison. Mostly as collateral damage, getting caught up in some scam that Merle was running, some deal that went sour. He’d come home from a late shift, engine grease still under his fingernails and his head ringing with all the bullshit little complaints he heard all goddamn day, only to find Merle and his asshole buddies spread out over the living room, the music blaring and the coffee table littered with their shit. More than once it was him that flushed the blow down the toilet moments before the cops showed up, him dragging on Merle’s arm to get him to back the fuck down. Sometimes it worked, and Merle would mutter and curse and let him deal with the cops and then cuff him in the head the minute they were gone, incoherent, raging. And sometimes it didn’t work, and Merle’d take a swing and get hauled off to county. And those times when Merle did go inside? They were the only times he could breathe.
Daryl kept his own nose clean. Occasionally a little weed if he needed to pass out, some ‘shrooms when the mood took him. He wasn’t a regular user and he sure as fuck didn’t sell. No little old ladies wrote him cheques for asphalt repairs he’d never show up for; he never had to escape out the bathroom window from the dude that wanted to break his legs.
But he ended up in a prison regardless.
Weird how shit happens.
Daryl takes the steps to Block C two at a time, crossbow thumping against his back until he emerges into the shadowy corridor. He hesitates at the bottom of the stairs to let his eyes adjust. Faintly, he can still hear the noise from the inhabited cells on Block B, a muted murmur of voices. Before he left, he’d seen Lori and Carl with their heads bent together over a book; T-Dog was still laboring over that old engine he’d dragged out of one of the prison vans; Rick had been teaching Carol how to clean and reassemble Dale’s old hunting rifle. He wouldn’t say everyone was relaxed - they’d learned, now, never to fully put their guard down - but they were more at peace than they’d been in a long time.
When Carol had raised her head to watch him across the expanse of the block, he’d quickly ducked his own head and walked away.
Daryl shakes his head now, brings himself back to the present. He only has to take a few steps into the hallway for the noise from above to fade out entirely. Here, there is only the faint drip from a busted main they’ve never been able to trace back to the source and the sound of the wind howling through the cracks in the windows penetrating from the outside world. At first, as usual, the silence is unnerving. In their little enclave on B, it’s never completely quiet. Seems like someone is always nattering on about something, and the damn Korean snores like a motherfucker. Silence takes some getting used to.
When his eyes adjust to the lack of light, he begins a slow circuit of the cell block.
He knows some of them think these patrols are pointless. Glenn’s been the most vocal, reminding them that they locked down every possible access point, that the doors are bolted, that there is no way in hell anything can get past them, living or undead. He’s probably right, but Daryl’s always been of the opinion that nothing is failsafe. The farm proved that. The golf course proved that. Any of a dozen bolt-holes since then proved that, and he’d have patrolled twice a day himself if Rick hadn’t backed his play and set up a regular schedule for all of them.
He’s got people to protect. People he cares about.
He shines a flashlight methodically into every cell, checks the deadbolts. Nothing changed since the day before or the day before that.
He’s halfway back to the stairwell when he hears the noise.
Flicking his finger over to the trigger is instinctual; other than that, he doesn’t move. Barely breathes. It’s several long moments before the noise repeats itself and he can identify the rasping shuffle of footsteps coming from a cell a few feet ahead and to his left. A cell that he already checked on his way through the block.
Part of him wants to call out, tell Glenn or whatever asshole has wandered down into C block to stop fucking with him. But the hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end, and despite the chill in the block he can feel a thin line of sweat crawling down his spine.
Whatever is in that cell is not human.
He takes a few shuffling steps of his own, stepping carefully on the worn and filthy concrete, using every trick he knows to mask his approach. It’s only when he’s almost parallel to the half-open door that he swings quickly around, brings his crossbow up and braces it on his arm to fire.
The walker is huddled in the furthest corner of the cell, pressed into the space between the bunk with its flea-infested blanket and the wall. Its shoulders are hunched, face averted from the thin shaft of light drifting through the grimy windowpane.
“Come on,” Daryl whispers.
The walker’s head twitches, and when it lifts its chin tangled blonde hair catches in the light. It snarls, jaw snapping at the air, and takes a single shuddering step forward.
Daryl dances back, blinking rapidly. He can hear the rapid pounding of his heart over the steady drip of the broken water main, over the thin whistle of the wind, over the walker’s primal growls. He can’t hear his own voice, but he knows he says the name.
Sophia.
* * *
“A ghost,” Rick repeats.
“I know how it sounds,” Daryl says. He pushes off from the wall, pacing the length of the small office. Tattered invoices and triplicate forms have been replaced by posted watch schedules and shift assignments that flutter in his wake. Not so different from the past, after all.
It took him what felt like forever to come to the decision to go to Rick. Not that he figured the man would laugh at him or mock him - Rick ain’t Merle. But he’s got plenty of experience in people not believing what he tells them, and for a man that does his best not to lie that’s a hard pill to swallow. Easier to just pretend he didn’t see Sophia at all, go about his business like normal. But in the end, that just wasn’t in him. Better to be misbelieved and have the truth out there than keep it hidden and maybe somebody gets hurt down the line.
“I’m not doubting you saw something,” Rick says.
Daryl stops his pacing, looks up to meet Rick’s eyes and can’t mask the surprise in his own.
Rick shrugs, leans his hip on the battered desk. “If the dead can walk, who else knows what else is out there in the world? Maybe what you saw was Sophia’s ghost. Maybe it was some… manifestation of your fears-“
“Oh Lord, don’t go spoutin’ no psychological mumbo-jumbo at me,” Daryl interrupts. “I know what I saw.”
“Fine,” Rick says. The hand he holds up is calloused, dirty from his afternoon shift shoring up the south wall. “Let’s say you did see Sophia. How do you want to deal with this?”
Daryl chews his lip, a bad habit left over from childhood that he’s never been able to break. “We have to keep Carol away from there.”
Rick nods. “That’s easy enough. I’ll tell her that I need her to take extra shifts in the garden. Best to utilize our people where they’re most suited, anyhow. But I think it’s best we keep this to ourselves.”
“Not tell Carol, you mean.”
“Not tell anyone,” Rick clarifies. “You and I will take the patrol shifts on Block B from now on. We’ll tell the others… hell, we’ll tell ‘em we didn’t think it was fair to pull them off more pressing matters. Nobody will argue. And we’ll watch.”
* * *
He’s sitting in the watch tower taking his early evening shift when Carol finds him.
“Brought you some supper,” she says by way of greeting. The food on the plate she hands him is still hot, thin tendrils of steam twisting in the breeze. “Glenn broiled up a couple of those rabbits you caught the other day. Added some of the spices Hershel found on the last run. It’s pretty tasty, actually.”
Daryl glances at the plate before setting it aside. The meat looks fine; smells fine even, enough to start his stomach to growling. But the thought of eating makes his stomach turn in a way that reminds him of those days on the farm, tucked away next to the crumbling chimney on the edge of the property, nursing his hurts inside and out. Makes him feel weak, and he doesn’t have time for weakness, can’t afford it. Especially now.
Carol frowns at the discarded plate. They’re the same frown lines that creased her brow when she was bent over the disassembled rifle that afternoon. He hates seeing them there, hates it even more when she turns the frown on him.
“Is everything okay?” she asks. Her hand comes up to rest on his forearm, grips lightly. “You look pale. Are you feeling all right?”
Daryl wrenches his arm away. “’m fine, quit clawin’ at me. I’m just tired.”
She doesn’t look like she believes him, but she releases her grip, props her arms against the concrete wall and stares out across the yard. From here, Daryl can see the first sprouts coming up in the vegetable garden they fashioned from the former exercise yard. They all did their part, clearing the land of rocks and pebbles, tilling the soil, planting the seeds. Rationing their own water in the beginning, sacrificing it to the land so the seeds could take root and flourish. But the garden is Carol’s more than anyone’s, her pride and joy.
She shouldn’t be frowning when she looks at it.
Daryl brushes a shoulder against hers. “Sorry,” he says.
She shrugs, doesn’t look his way. “You know your body better than me. I shouldn’t bother you.”
“It’s not a bother,” he says, and when she turns to face him with a tentative smile, he fumbles for the plate on the concrete ledge, picks at the cooling hare to have something to do with his hands. It’s only when she’s patted him once on the arm and he can hear her footsteps echoing from the stairwell as she descends back to the ground that he sets the plate aside, scrubs a hand across his face.
“You’re not a bother,” he says to the cool evening air.
II
Daryl sees Sophia again three days later.
He can’t lie and tell himself that he imagined it the first time, because he knows he didn’t. But every day when he descends the stairwell into Block C, shoulders stiff and back ramrod straight, nerves thrumming, he does tell himself that it doesn’t have to happen again. Sophia is at rest, her fragile body buried on the old farm. He carved the place-marker himself, just a simple cross with her name engraved on it but pretty enough all the same. He even made sure her little doll went into the ground with her. Her soul should be at peace.
He tells himself this every single day, reminds himself that her shade cannot hurt him.
That doesn’t stop him from flinging up his bow when he hears her shuffling footsteps in the abandoned cell. Doesn’t stop his mouth from going dry when she sees him and cocks her head, her tiny hands flailing and grasping at the air. When her teeth snap together with an audible crunch he flinches, sidles back until his ass hits the bars of the cell behind him. And though he’s sure he never looks away, he doesn’t see her disappear.
It’s only later, lying sleepless in his lumpy bunk and listening to Glenn’s snores rattle the bars in the next cell, that he realizes that Sophia’s eyes had lost the glossy white film common to the walkers. Thinking on it, he’d almost swear that she knew him. Recognized him.
The air in the cellblock is thick and close, holding all the heat of the day. But he still pulls the flimsy blanket up to his shoulders, and shivers.
* * *
The herd arrives the next day.
It’s small as they go these days, around 70 head, but more aggressive than they’ve seen in a long while. The frost wire fences heave when the undead fling their decaying bodies against it, and getting close to it to take them out with their standard tools of fireplace pokers and lead pipes means risking getting grabbed and drawn in to those gaping mouths, or scratched by jagged nails. Daryl goes through all his arrows and the rest are forced to use the guns, using up ammunition that they can’t afford to spare. The point blank range means they rarely miss, but Daryl sees Rick cringe when he’s tallying up the damage to their reserves.
Maggie and Lori have already taken up lookout on the towers and T-Dog’s rolling open the gate when Carol finds him, pulling on work gloves to begin the clean-up. She’s flushed, exhilarated with success, and she reminds him suddenly of himself when he was a kid, when scoring the kill was the most important part of the hunt, before the pride in tracking for the sake of the skill it took went to the forefront.
“You did good today,” he tells her. Keeping half an eye on her is as natural as breathing, as common an occurrence as the rats that scurry through the empty prison cells. He doesn’t think about it, he realizes now. He just does it, making sure he knows where she’s at and how well she’s holding up, and today she didn’t flinch, didn’t miss a shot as far as he could tell. She should be proud.
“Far cry from where I came from,” she says.
Sometimes it’s hard for him to remember that Carol, the one that came to him after weeks on the run, miserable and tired, feeling sorry for herself, still believing all the bullshit that her fuckass husband had drilled into her head. She’d come to him, crying that she couldn’t do it, that she was useless, that she was going to get someone killed, get herself killed.
But that conversation, the one that turned everything around for her? He remembers that like it was yesterday. He hadn’t pulled any punches.
“You don’t want to drag people down? Be a burden?” he’d said. “Then don’t be. Only person who can fix you is you.”
And he’d watched her face crumple and her lips quiver and mentally kicked himself, told himself that he should have phrased it differently, taken it easier on her. But then her shoulders had straightened and she’d swiped a hand across her eyes. Nodded at him.
“You’re right, Daryl,” she’d said. “Will you teach me how to shoot?”
“Nope,” he had answered immediately. When her face fell, he just shook his head. “I ain’t a good teacher. Don’t got the patience.” They’d been staying at the old soccer stadium then, and he’d scanned the grounds, jutted his chin. “Lori. She’s a good shot. Good teacher, too. Ain’t gonna bite your head off if you make a mistake and get a black eye from the recoil.”
“You wouldn’t bite my head off.”
Daryl remembers that he had squinted into the sunlight, had told himself that he was just checking the horizon and not avoiding meeting her eyes. Despite the months that had passed, on the farm and off it, he still wasn’t used to people having that kind of blind faith in him.
Still wasn’t completely comfortable with it, truth be told. It’s unnerving, kind of irritating, makes his skin itch in a way that’s impossible to scratch. Especially when it’s her.
He blinks, brings himself back to the present. To Carol, smiling at him. He feels his lips twitch in response and then she’s patting his arm and moving away, running to catch up with Hershel, saying something about boiling clean water for the work crew.
Daryl spends the afternoon heaving several dozen reeking, rotting bodies onto the burn pile and doesn’t see a single one. All he sees is that smile.
III
She’s sitting when he sees her the next time, two weeks later, thin arms wrapped around bony knees. But Sophia struggles to her feet when she sees him. Her upper lip curls when she snaps at him, and he keeps a wary distance, but even in the deep gloom of the cell he can see that the discoloration in her mouth has faded along with the misty cast to her eyes. Her hair looks different too, though he can’t place how. She still snarls at him, still stumble-walks when she takes a few steps closer to the bars. He still believes - knows - that she could hurt him if she wanted, shade or not. Infect him. Kill him.
But he’s not afraid.
* * *
Once a month, they treat themselves. The generator comes out. Lights at half power - as Rick is quick to point out, they don’t want to advertise their presence - and a battered old boom box hooked up and playing softly in the corner, mostly CDs that Beth and Carl manage to salvage on their supply missions, music sung by boys that sound like girls to Daryl’s ears. If they’ve managed to scrounge up any booze on the runs that comes out too, though nobody drinks much these days. Getting caught off guard and full of hooch isn’t a thought that anyone savours.
Daryl usually volunteers for watch in the guard tower on those nights. They remind him too much of his past, of school dances-club nights-grimy bars, of sitting in the corner nursing a soda or a beer or a shot, of being ignored at best and ridiculed at worst. Too many of those nights ended with skirmishes in parking lots, black eyes and bruised knuckles, rushed groping with strangers in back alleys, falling into bed with burning eyes and stomach twisted in knots. With the thin walls failing to block the sound of Merle in the next room, fucking some blonde with dead eyes and track marks on her arms. With punching his pillow and wishing for something different, better, more, and not having a clue how to get it.
Tonight, though, T-Dog had insisted on taking his watch. Clapped him on the shoulder, said, “You been doin’ all those extra patrols on C, as well as still taking on the supply runs and the hunts. You deserve a break, man.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
There’s no corner to hide in, but Daryl sits as far from the laughter and camaraderie as he can, as far from Maggie and Glenn swaying in time to the music as he can get without seeming completely antisocial. He’s busy staring into the dregs of the single bottle of warm beer that he’s allowed himself and wondering how long he should wait before escaping out into the cool evening air when the table shifts. He raises his eyes to Carol sliding into the chair next to him.
“Having fun?” she asks.
“Oh yeah,” he answers dryly. “Barrel of laughs.”
She ignores the sarcasm, turns her eyes to the rest of the group. “I love these nights. Ed… Ed never let me listen to music.”
“Ed was a fuckwad,” Daryl grunts out.
“He really was,” Carol laughs. She turns to face him fully, dropping her eyes to something in her lap. She holds the item out tentatively, and even in the dim lighting he can see that a flush has come into her cheeks. “I made you something,” he says.
Daryl’s fingers fumble as he takes it, the wool catching on the callouses on the pads of his fingers. The yarn is in a myriad of colours, bright purple and orange and pastel green and a sickly shade of yellow that reminds him uncomfortably of bile. He squints, looks up to meet Carol’s eyes. “It’s-“
“Hideous, I know,” Carol says with a grin. “There were only scraps on the ends of all the skeins we found, so I had to make do. But it’s a close knit, and it’ll be warm. The nights are getting a lot colder out there.”
He shakes out the scarf, trails his fingers along the fringe. Tries to remember the last time anyone gave him something. A gift. Might’ve been one Christmas. Was one of the rare occasions when times were flush at the Dixon house. He was too young to know why. He only knew that the train set was bright and big and new, and he remembers his ma’s eyes shining with tears when she gave it to him, her looking happy despite the purpling bruise discolouring her cheekbone. He remembers playing with that damn train night and day, ‘til Merle came home New Year’s Eve, stumble-drunk and hooting, tripped over it on the bedroom floor and then kicked it into the wall.
Daryl doesn’t remember any presents after that.
He’s embarrassed to discover his throat is dry, his hand shaking. He quickly makes a fist, shoves the scarf toward her. “It’s great,” he says, “but I can’t take this. You’ve got night shifts, too. You’ll need it.”
“It’s yours,” she says, shaking her head and getting up. Her thin shoulders lift in a shrug. “You can lend it to me.”
She’s halfway across the room before he realizes that he didn’t thank her.
And he knows it’s ridiculous, he knows, but he still sleeps that night with one hand wrapped around the damn scarf.
IV
The next time he sees Sophia, a week later, he understands.
* * *
Daryl stands at the edge of the vegetable garden, watching Carol work.
It took a lot of man-hours, a lot of sweat and hard work to clear the land. But soon they’ll have fresh turnips and squash, real potatoes that don’t come out of a dented can. There are tentative plans to fuel up a backhoe, head out to one of the nearby farms and attempt to dig up and transport a few apple and peach trees so they don’t have to risk leaving the safety of the yard for the harvest.
Here, with the brick wall at his back and the garden stretching out before him, it’s hard to remember that walkers exist at all.
Daryl walks carefully between the rows, drops down beside her. The ground is hard beneath his knees, but pliant. Good soil.
Carol glances up at him with a smile but continues working, long elegant fingers patiently digging out the weeds. Funny how he never noticed just how graceful her fingers were before, how deft. The silence that stretches out between them is comfortable, soothing, and Daryl’s sorely tempted to just leave it at that. But he knows that if he doesn’t speak now he’ll never get any peace, and in this world peace is hard to come by. When a man gets a chance to find it, he’s gotta take it.
“Got somethin’ to say,” he manages to get out.
Carol pauses in working out a tenacious weed, looks over at him and shades her eyes with her hand. The dirt is grimed into every line on her palm, mired beneath her nails, and he wonders if - before all this, before the end of the world - she was the type to garden wearing a big floppy hat, flowered gloves. He thinks probably she just dug right in, the same as she does now. She doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.
“Okay,” she says.
Daryl brushes his fingers across the green tops of the carrots. Ready to pick soon, if the memories of his ma’s scrubby little back garden are anything to go by. The sun beats down on his bent neck, and he’s aware of Carol pressing her lips together and turning back to her weeding, of a beetle trundling across the dirt, of the tracks of the trowel left behind from digging into the soft earth. Everything seems to stand out in sharp relief, and all of it is nothing to the sweat trickling down his back and beading his face, making his ragged too-long hair stick to his cheeks and his neck. Sweat that has nothing to do with the sun.
“Thing is,” he says finally, “I ain’t good with words.”
Carol doesn’t look up from her work when she replies. “You’re a man of action. Nothing wrong with that.”
A man of action. Daryl suppresses a snort, runs his fingers through the topsoil. Seems to him that a man of action would know what to do and how to do it, wouldn’t stutter and stammer like a goddamn schoolboy. A man of action would sweep his woman into his arms, whisper in her ear how much he cares for her, tell her that loving her makes him stronger, not weaker. He watches as Carol gently pushes the dislodged soil back into place and wants to tell her how much he wants those hands on him, how he can’t sleep for wanting that, for wanting her, every bit of her.
He thinks it all, and the sun beats down, unrelenting in its observation of his failure.
“Fuck it. I can’t do this,” he says finally. He stars to push up from the ground but then her hand is on his arm, cool and dirty from working in the loose soil, and he freezes. Everything in him is telling him to run away, to not let this happen. He stares away, away, beyond the cleared field, beyond the barb-wired topped fence, stares at the treetops, at the birds swirling in the clear blue summer sky.
But when her hand moves up to frame his face, he lets her do it. When she smoothes a palm down his cheek and urges him silently to face her, he forces himself to meet her eyes.
And when she kisses him, lips dry and chapped yet incredibly, deliciously soft, he realizes that he has never been this happy. Never in his whole miserable life.
“I think,” she says when they part, “that you’re doing just fine.”
* * *
The next day, Rick agrees to give up his first patrol shift of Block C. He looks curious but doesn’t ask why, and Daryl is grateful.
Daryl heads straight to the cell that he’s come to think of as Sophia’s. He’s not surprised to find her waiting for him.
But this time when she steps from the shadows, her back is straight, her eyes clear. Her hair is clean and brushed to a shine, held back from her face by a thick black ribbon. This is a little girl who never watched her mama get beat down, never had to hide herself from a drunken daddy. This is Sophia bright and shiny and whole.
He watches her until she fades away.
V
“You’re sure you’ve got everything?” Glenn asks for the third time. “The knife?”
“I’ve got the knife,” Maggie snaps. “I’ve got the gun, the ammunition, the backpack. Do you want to check my bag to make sure I packed clean underwear, too?”
“Jeez, excuse me for being concerned,” Glenn says before he frowns. “Wait. You didn’t pack clean underwear, did you? You’re not supposed to be gone that long. I should be going with you-“
“We’ve been through this,” Rick interrupts. “Maggie and Daryl and T can check a few snares and go on a supply run without you, Glenn. Shocking, I know.”
Daryl turns away from the gathered group, eyes Carol warily. “You ain’t gonna ask if I brought clean underwear, are ya?”
She leans her hands on his chest, grins cheekily up at him. “Last I checked, you weren’t wearing any.”
Daryl feels the heat rush to his cheeks, hopes that it can be chalked up to the sun beating down half a billion degrees, already causing sweat to bead on his skin, the hair at the nape of his neck to dampen and curl. He looks around to make sure no one is watching before he pecks her awkwardly on the forehead.
This - all of it, this closeness - still makes him dizzy, makes him feel clumsy and off-kilter. He knows he’s lucky that she’s a good woman, willing to be patient. Willing to just lie with him on the two cots they’ve pushed together in their shared cell at the end of the tier, willing to just touch him in the dark, let him touch her. There’s no privacy for anything more, and frankly he’s not ready for anything more, still getting used to the sure solid weight of her as a presence in his life.
He squints back at the group, Maggie murmuring something in Glenn’s ear now before leaning in to kiss him good-bye, smooth and easy. Daryl wishes he could feel that comfortable, wishes he had the words to tell Carol that he was going to miss her, that his bedroll will feel empty and cold without her curling around his side, that he’ll worry about her safety and be proud of her for her strength. He opens his mouth, closes it again without saying a word.
But when Carol just smoothes her palms down his chest and smiles brightly at him as she steps back, he stops wishing for the things he can’t be, the things he can’t say. She knows. Somehow, she knows.
* * *
Two days later, she’s waiting for him at the gate. He’s so grateful to see her that he kisses her without thinking twice about it.
It isn’t awkward at all.
* * *
Daryl waits until Carol is snoring softly beside him before he crawls carefully from the cot. He slides into his pants and boots, but doesn’t bother with a shirt. He bends to snag his backpack from the floor, then pauses at the cell door to watch the rise and fall of Carol’s chest, to study the profile of her face against the pillow, the exact position of her fingers curled on the blanket. He has a portfolio of these images now, tucked away safe. He lets himself flip through them when he’s alone on the watchtower, or when he’s out on a hunt. Anytime he’s alone and the long hours are pressing down on him. Nobody can ever take them away.
Hershel glances curiously his way when he passes through the common area of B block, but the old man doesn’t ask any questions. Every one of them’s had bouts of insomnia since they went on the run, and strangely the issues only got worse once they had four solid walls ringed with barb-wire around them and a roof over their heads. The brain is a fucking weird thing, and sometimes it just doesn’t want to believe that safety is actually at hand.
He makes his way carefully down the stairs to Block C. The only illumination comes from the moonlight shining through the barred windows, striping the floor in alternating bands of black and gold. But he knows the way unerringly.
He stops at the door of Sophia’s cell, unties the straps on his pack and reaches inside.
The hunt was successful. He and Maggie and T-Dog returned with enough canned goods to get them through until their own vegetables flourish, as well as a brace of rabbits, a dozen squirrels and a pheasant. But Daryl had a secondary target on the hunt as well, one that was more important to him than creamed corn and wild game.
The flower is a little crushed, but he carefully smoothes out the petals before he places it on the bunk nearest the corner where Sophia used to stand. The moonbeams almost seem to shift to bathe the Cherokee rose in their light.
“This one,” Daryl says into the silence of the cell, “bloomed for you.”
.